E L G E R E S S E R : Six American Sunsets

6 December 2008 - 7 February, 2009

Capitola, 2008

ELGER ESSER's photographs walk a line between painterly concerns and photographic documentation, unapologetically beautiful images that document an emotional presence in the synchronicity of light and color. Six American Sunsets is the product of a two-month residency with The Lapis Press in Culver City, CA. Captured in the course of road trips through Central and Northern California and the Washington coast these images display the same searching gaze that expertly framed his well known landscapes of Western Europe. But in these images of the American West there’s an added element of a place steeped in its own myth; this is the end of westward expansion. Setting his tripod near the same bluffs Edward Weston did decades before, Esser has created a body of work that takes into account the traditional canons of landscape photography and painting even as it pursues a contemporary conceptual model. Six American Sunsets is another magnificent achievement it is an impressive investigation of landscape, history, place and the imagery that surrounds it.